Arrest warrant issued for major Yukos shareholder

Page Tools

A Moscow court has issued an arrest warrant for a large shareholder in the beleaguered Russian oil giant Yukos on charges of involvement in murder and attempted murder.

The warrant was issued against Leonid Nevzlin, who lives in self-imposed exile in Israel, reports said.

Nevzlin was granted Israeli citizenship last year, but Israeli authorities said at the time that would not automatically shield him from extradition to Russia.

The warrant adds to the already complicated array of legal actions swirling around Russia's largest oil producer.

The company faces an overdue back-taxes bill of 99.4 billion rubles that it says could drive it into bankruptcy and its former CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky is on trial on charges of forgery, fraud and tax evasion.

Nevzlin, whom Forbes magazine says has a net worth of about $US2 billion ($2.8 billion), is charged in connection with the 2002 murder of a husband and wife. A former Yukos security officer, Alexei Pichugin, has been jailed since mid-2003 for the killing.

AdvertisementAdvertisement

According to Russian news reports, Pichugin is alleged to have hired a man named Sergei Gorin to intimidate a mutual rival and Gorin is alleged to have hired others to set off an explosive device outside the rival's home in 1998. Four years later, according to the reports, Gorin demanded hefty remuneration for the action and Pichugin allegedly had him and his wife killed.

Pichugin allegedly acted on Nevzlin's direct order, the charges claim, according to the Interfax news agency.

Nevzlin is also charged with allegedly ordering attempted assassinations of several other people, including the head of the Moscow mayor's communications office, Interfax said.

Nevzlin was formerly head of the Russian Jewish Congress - the group once headed by media tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky, another oligarch who found refuge in Israel. Nevzlin entered Israel on a tourist visa last autumn as legal actions against Yukos were intensifying.

Russian authorities say the wave of actions against Yukos and its officials are part of an anti-corruption drive, but many analysts see the moves as a Kremlin-led campaign to punish Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man, for funding opposition political parties and to stifle his presumed personal political ambitions.